Current extinction risk and historical patterns of speciation and extinction in relation to nest placement strategy

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There is high variation in nest placement site across bird families.

There are phylogenetic patterns in nest placement strategy.

There is a phylogenetic signal for IUCN extinction risk in birds.

What shared factors matter for extinction risk?

Habitat degradation is the primary threat to bird species globally.

Habitat degradation is the primary threat to bird species globally.

Habitat degradation is the primary threat to bird species globally.

Focusing on the interaction of intrinsic and external factors could improve predictions of extinction risk.

Nest placement strategy is likely a useful predictor of extinction risk.

• Interacts with nest predation, sea level rise, and other threats in degraded habitat
• Relatively high variation across families
• Minimal variation within species
• Super easy to measure

RQ1: Does including nest placement strategy in models improve predictions of global extinction risk of bird species, as measured by IUCN status?

Methods

• Use the species tree dataset from Prum et al. (2015)
• Scrape the Handbook of Birds of the World for nest placement strategies
• Phylogenetic generalized least squares to quantify relationship between nest placement strategy and extinction risk

RQ2: Can historical speciation and extinction (net diversification) rates within clades be predicted by nest placement strategy?

Methods

• Several examined and concealed states-dependent spciation and extinction (SecSSE) model
• Combines best elements of HiSSE and MuSSE by allowing both hidden states and multiple character states
• Used to estimate the role of different nest placement strategies in net diversification

RQ3: What is the signal of diversification following a shift in nest placement strategy? Does a shift lead to adaptive radiation as a new ecological niche opens up?

Methods

• Lineage through time analysis with event detection
• Modeling Evolutionary Diversification Using Stepwise Akaike Information Criterion (MEDUSA)
• Detect diversification rate shifts within clades, suggesting links between traits and diversification

Project Significance and Broader Impacts

• Can be used to identify data-deficient species at risk of extinction
• Data can be collected as part of a citizen science effort
• Provides an opportunity to train undergraduates in text mining and scraping
• Undergraduates can use scrape the Handbook of Birds of the World for data for side projects simultaneously

Questions?